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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27054628">This Is No Garden of Eden</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Existential Angst, Eye Trauma, Gen, Internal Monologue, Stream of Consciousness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:33:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>707</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27054628</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After meeting Jared for the last time, Jon's reunited with his rib. This prompts him down a brief if intense existential spiral.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>This Is No Garden of Eden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>CW for minor eye trauma and enough self indulgent existential angst to drown 3 Neistzches stacked in a trenchcoat.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jon cradles his own rib in his hands, a prize pried from where Jared Hopworth used to be.</p><p>A question: if every board in a ship is replaced, is it still the same ship? Is he still the same man, board for board, bone for bone, or is the sum of him now something else?</p><p>He knows the answer. It's complicated — but then so many things are. Underneath his nails is dirt and blood and flesh and bone but what do those things <em>mean</em>, really, when they no longer serve a purpose? Chambers of a heart that don't need to beat and lungs that don't need to breathe, unaware they're obsolete. A vessel made of superfluous organs and meat.  </p><p>Bacteria, virus, infection; these words fail to encompass the entirety of his predicament. How every shred of who he is has been claimed, warped, owned, yet somehow he feels...nothing. No fear, no disgust, no sorrow. He wishes he could feel anything at all. He finds himself wishing less and less.  </p><p>His patron has seen to that. The Eye sees to everything, tending his apathy as Jared did his garden. It nourishes him and so he blooms, power growing in magnitudes. Insatiable, its dear Archive is, running his fingers over thorns made of bonespur and basking in the glow of its omnipotent gaze.</p><p>
  <em> I know who I am. </em>
</p><p>Of course. He can't not know, watching himself watching in blood-soaked corners of a stranger’s dream. The problem is that <em> I </em> is a malleable definition. It feeds. It grows. It swirls in his mind, beating against the confines of his skull, and every time he’s plunged into that frothing fear-tide a little less of him returns to the surface. </p><p>He knows one day he'll never resurface at all. The Ceaseless Watcher will hollow him out, swallow every definition that marks his separation as an <em> I </em>, a name, a man. What can he do? For all he offers his god there's no answer to that question, just another tortured story to be told. There's no wisdom he can garner from their pain.</p><p>When he looks down at his arm, half a dozen blinking eyes look back. He stares numbly and continues his stroll in the garden.</p><p>Maybe he does feel one thing after all: anticipation. His metamorphosis is slow and all he wants is for this to be over — no, that's not it. He wants a fucking <em> answer </em>. He wants to look Jonah in the eye and tell him just how little he mattered in the grand scheme of it all.</p><p>Jon cradles his old rib and Beholding cradles the world.</p><p>The truth is he likes it here. He can't be anything other than what he is and he can't tell Martin, he <em> has </em> to, he can't—</p><p>"Statement of..." He sinks into his role with relief. By now it's more natural than breathing, and when he's done he raises his wrist. Nestled in it is an eye blinking up at him with an iris of hazel. It twitches as he brings his mouth to it for a kiss and <em> shit </em>, that hurts, but no more than a knife to the throat or fire scouring his hand.</p><p>He presses his lips harder against its jellylike surface. The twinge becomes proper pain shooting up his arm but he keeps his groan sealed behind clenched teeth. A different force is building in him, glimmers of something genuinely human. A scream, maybe. He could use one of those.</p><p>His knees are getting weak. The lashes scratch at his jaw and nose, trying in vain to close. Who is he trying to punish at this point, the Eye or himself? The harder he chases for that feeling the farther it gets away from him until—</p><p>
  <b> <em>Â̴͚r̷̛̖̠̎̊̇͜c̵̡̜̠̬̙̟͑̔̂͒̕h̶̢͇̳̣̤̞̣̾͆̕͝į̶̦͕̖̘̮͚̎̈͠v̶̎ͅę̴͈̆͝</em> </b>
</p><p>—it's gone.</p><p>Jon pulls his mouth away from his wrist with a soft gasp and this time there's no eye looking back at him. There's no eyes at all, save for the two in his head.</p><p>The birdsong's faded into silence. No more stories wait in this garden for him to tell. He leaves his rib as a marker for the next aspiring landscaper to find, sticking out of the soil like a weed: the Ceaseless Watcher sends its regards.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'll be honest, the only reason I put this on anonymous is because I'm embarrassed by how self-indulgently depressing and pretentious it is, but screw it. Maybe someone else will get some entertainment out of my word vomit.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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